Spirit Log: Plantation XO Barbados 20th Anniversary

Having been mightily impressed by the Plantation 3 Stars (which actually became one of my 2015 Spirits of the Year), I did a bit of research on the brand and found some really interesting (to me at least) expressions. The most expensive of these (excepting the 1998 Jamaican Tokaji Finish) was the 20^th Anniversary XO Barbados rum, so that’s what we have here.

It’s a disappointing 40% alcohol, but it’s beautifully presented and, while at £46 (+ P&P) it’s expensive for rum, it looks the part and is blended from Plantation’s oldest stocks – though how old these are is not specified. So it is aged for a number of years in the tropical climate of the Caribbean first, in ex-bourbon casks, then transposed in to French oak casks and aged a little further in a French cellar. Rumratings.com reckon the first ageing is 12-20 years, and the second 12-18 months.

These Plantation products sure are interesting – enough to make me want to spend more money on rum than I ever have before - so let’s see what it’s all about.

Rum has always been a little uninteresting and easy in my admittedly under-educated opinion – it just doesn’t seem complicated enough, so I was certainly hoping to discover some hidden depths on this excursion. I don’t want to end up spending too much when I buy rum, but it would be nice if this were exceptional at this price point – the 3 Stars certainly was at its.

The packaging on this one, is just gorgeous – too beautiful to open, as a friend I Whatsappd an image of it to said. I love bottles like this that have a clear base like that, though I can’t say I’m a fan of the straw webbing that has been added to represent the way bottles of rum used to be transported in days of yore. Elsewhere there’s an oversized stopper (the oversized part and the stopper part of which separated themselves long before the contents were depleted – which is a mark against) and it is all housed in a tasteful cardboard box (that, given my colourblindness, I finally had to concede was brown, rather than red).

I told my friend (coincidentally another recent father) that I’d save opening it until he could be there – as long as he came to the Picadilly Mile brewery crawl that would mark the end of the year long Distinct Beers Challenge in November. I did, but we were all so hammered by the time we got home that his glass and another friend’s were left unfinished.

So, this is very sweet. Too sweet for me, in fact. It’s almost like a soft drink. If I wasn’t so busy trying to taste the fuck out of it and find some depth and complexity, I could actually imagine chugging this like a cold glass of coke on a hot day. You know what this really needs? A little extra alcohol kick. Despite a whole swath of excellent reviews all across the the internet, for my money, the XO is not as complex or interesting as the 3 Stars. It is actually far more like brandy than I was expecting it to be – which shouldn’t be all that surprising when you consider its pedigree. It is however, good for early drinking – not so complex as to confuse your tastebuds when they aren’t fully awake yet in the afternoon.

A real bonus with this one, is that it is the ideal spirit to be enjoyed alongside or just after deserts. I can’t tell you the glasses of whisky I’ve wasted by trying to drink them alongside chocolate or cake – or soon afterwards. Or indeed the number of nights I’ve had to decide which I want more – fancy desert or fancy spirits (fancy spirits always wins out, and deserts are useful commiserations on the nights I’m not drinking). The Plantation XO though, is so sweet that it doesn’t react with such rich fare as Krispy Kreme donuts or white chocolate cheesecake. And that’s good to know.

I’m glad then, to have found something with such a wide range of uses and, while I haven’t found it as interesting as I’d hoped, I have to admit that I have enjoyed drinking it more casually than I would the spirits I consider special. Not considering it special has enabled me to treat it more liberally and not hold it to such stringent testing. So in the end, it deserves a lot of credit – not least because on one night I drank it in a direct comparison with the Havana Club Anejo Especial and the Appleton Estate Signature Blend, and the XO absolutely blitzed them. Yes, you would expect that at more than twice the price of each of those products, but how much better it was is astounding.No, it won’t be troubling for a Spirits of the Year place, but seriously well played, Plantation XO. I think this will appeal to a lot of people but at around £45 it might seem a bit expensive to them. Nevertheless I’d urge them to give it a go. Whoever they are.

Actual Quality: Plantation 3 Stars Rum

sadly I think I used my decent picture in an earlier post

We might have stumbled across something of a gem here. There I was, just calling into the Trafford Centre to collect my sister’s birthday present, with a trip to Asda for party wine and beer to follow, when I realised I had an uncertain quantity of M&S vouchers in my wallet… that I was sure I could use to buy  a bottle of tequila or a bottle of rum…

And so here we are, with Plantation 3 Stars rum. It’s white (or silver), a pleasing 41.2%, and blended by Cognac producer Pierre Ferrand from rums distilled in Jamaica, Barbados and Trinidad. The Plantation range consists of 12 expressions, ranging from this one at the bottom of the scale, through rums of various vintages, ages and cask finishes that sound pretty special and very tempting. It all began because Maison Ferrand would sell casks that had contained Cognac to Caribbean rum producers for ageing their products, and one day  happened to discover some very old batches that they decided to bottle.

According to the producer’s website, this one begins with a 3-year aged Trinidad rum, which is “carbon filtered to maintain its white colour and remove the heavier tannins while preserving the aromatics developed and refined by aging”. Un-aged rums from Barbados and Jamaica are then blended, along with a more expensive 12 year old rum from Jamaica, which is said to be the key to the whole blend. “Trinidad brings elegance and refinement, Barbados brings character and aromatics with fruit notes without being too heavy and Jamaica brings the funk, the touch that makes it a complete product.” 

And that’s the most marketing blurb you’re going to get out of me. I just thought it was quite interesting, and that the producer said it better than I could.

Onto the evaluation; I’ve never found rum particularly interesting before, but this brand has made me think again. It helps that its strength exceeds 40%, but most importantly, this is really tastey.

Even before I realised a reputable cognac producer was behind this product, I could tell it was going to be a little bit special from the presentation. The bottle looks the part and is tastefully sealed. There’s maybe a little bit too much to read on the label, but at least you know it has something to tell you. You probably are surprised when you read that it was blended in France, but you also start to think that this will turn out to be a good thing – after all, this wasn’t a  Lidl product, blended in Germany – I’d just been to M&S, after all. Then you look on the internet and realise it isn’t even a made for M&S product. It’s actually all that stuff that I mentioned earlier in the article.

Sure, the £15 in M&S vouchers and another £3 off helped make my mind up in regard to the purchase – it was intended mostly for mojitos, in actual fact – but it represents one of those watershed moments where I’ll resolve to get something like this in future, instead of settling for something shit. It’s like tequila in that respect; as soon as I tasted 100% agave and found that I could get it fairly reliably for £20, I could see no sense in buying anything inferior ever again – even for gratuitous mixing (a practice that takes place less and less in my house these days). And I never did make any mojitos with it.

Not being one for detailed tasting notes, I’ll just tell you, this is very sweet. Sweet, but full of flavour. Cast your mind back to the last time you tried drinking Bacardi or one of those supermarket white rums straight. Even though they are only 37.5% or something like that, there’s little in the way of flavour there, it’s just alcohol, for adding weight to your fruit juice or getting you hammered. This is white rum you can actually sip. I didn’t think such a thing existed. But I’m here to tell you, it does, and it’s worth your £25 if you’re in the market for a new bottle that might surprise you.

And you don’t just have to take my word for it. “Buy clever not expensive” says one user reviewer on The Whisky Exchange, and never has a user review been more on the money. Yes, it’s twice as expensive as your standard supermarket own brands and nearly £10 more expensive than standard white rum brands such as Bacardi, but for £25, you’re getting something that you can confidently call actual quality, and that’s probably a first for me in the genre of rum – especially white rum.

Meanwhile, a user review on Master of Malt says that there are only two white rums that can be called amazing, and this is one of them. Even if there is only one other amazing white rum out there (J Wray, apparently), I won’t be so quick to write this genre off in future.

For my part, I took this along with me to a party in Sheffield where it went down a treat with everyone that tried it. They pretty much all said it was the best straight rum they’d tried and that they would definitely buy it at £25 from M&S for themselves. Now, some months later, whether they have done I don’t know. But I do know I’ll be investing in another bottle soon. If you’re still not convinced, remember I have already recognised this product in my 2015 Spirits of theYear. High praise indeed.